The Paris Syndrome Report: Which Cities Underwhelm Tourists the Most?

Glamorous TikToks and wanderlust-filled travel blogs can set high expectations for tourist destinations. Sometimes they can set the wrong expectations. 

When we visit a city and it simply does not live up to the image we have created in our head it can be upsetting. For some, this feeling can cause very real physical and mental pain and discomfort, called Paris syndrome. 

We wanted to find out which cities were the worst culprits in the world for not living up to tourists’ expectations. In our 2021 report, we discovered it was in fact the French capital itself, however, things have now changed. 

This year we expanded our study and analyzed over 826,000 popular online review platform reviews, across 100 of the most visited cities in the world, to find out which city is most guilty of not meeting tourists’ expectations and creating the ultimate Paris syndrome environment.

Key findings:

• Tourists in Orlando, U.S are most likely to experience Paris syndrome as the city had the highest proportion of visitors complaining the city did not meet expectations.
• Budapest however came out as the city where travellers are most pleasantly surprised by their experience, the complete opposite of a Paris syndrome-inducing environment.
• Despite Paris not being the city most guilty of underwhelming tourists in 2022, reviews of the city’s attractions did have the second-highest percentage of mentions of ‘overrated’ and ‘scams’ in the world. Tourists landing at Gare du Nord, Gare de l’Est, Gare de Lyon, therefore, are sometimes happy to take the train home.
• Budapest is considered the most ‘beautiful’ city while Rome has the most ‘must-see’ attractions according to tourists’ reviews.
• Orlando also had the highest percentage of reviews where tourists felt ‘ripped off’ as well as the most comments of ‘rude’ people.

What is Paris syndrome?

This very real psychological condition is sometimes experienced by first-time visitors to Paris, France, whose expectations of the city are so romanticised that they get overwhelmingly disappointed when they are faced with the reality.

The quaint and fairytale-like image of Paris, portrayed in movies and books doesn’t always match the reality of this busy city, and the realization can sometimes leave tourists in a state of utter shock. In the French newspaper, Libération, the former President of the Franco-Japanese Medical Association was quoted stating that news and tourism media are primarily responsible for creating the syndrome’s less-than-realistic image of Paris. 

Symptoms of Paris syndrome vary, but hallucinations, anxiety, dizziness, acute delusions and sweating are among the most commonly reported. 

2021 results of The Paris Syndrome Report

In 2021, our study found that Paris did in fact live up to the psychological condition’s name, as it was the most underwhelming city with the highest frequency of reviews, where expectations were not met, followed by Hong Kong. 

For 2022, we wanted to grow this study further; including 80 more cities and over 700,000 more reviews to discover which cities are underwhelming, and capable of inducing Paris syndrome side effects. Taking this extra data, as well as reviews from people traveling post-pandemic, here’s how the results have changed. 

Paris syndrome: Cities where reality did not meet expectations

According to the study, tourists are now much happier with their experience of Paris. With cities in Malaysia, America, and Indonesia now making up the top three underwhelming cities in the world. 

Orlando, U.S. is the world’s most underwhelming city, where people are most likely to suffer from Paris syndrome, with almost 1 in 5 (19.52%) tourist reviews mentioning how disappointing and underwhelming their vacation experience was. Popular online review platform reviews in 2022 for the top attractions in Orlando frequently mention the crowds and increased prices, with both Universal and Disneyland increasing admission fees in 2022. 

Second to America’s ‘Theme Park Capital’ is Jakarta, Indonesia’s current capital city (until 2024), followed by one of Thailand’s party hotspots, Pattaya. 

The top ten most underwhelming tourist cities can be seen below:

Rank	City	Country	Negative comments in reviews
1	Orlando	U.S	19.52%
2	Jakarta	Indonesia	13.49%
3	Pattaya	Thailand	10.50%
4	Denpasar	Indonesia	9.98%
5	Guilin	China	9.70%
6	Johannesburg	South Africa	9.25%
7	Da Nang	Vietnam	9.17%
8	Ha Long	Vietnam	9.15%
9	Shenzhen	China	9.05%
10	Beijing	China	9.01%

Cities that exceeded travellers’ expectations

On the opposite end of the scale, there were cities that exceeded expectations and tourists found themselves surprised at their enjoyment. This could be where tourists had low expectations to begin with, or the city exceeded their already high expectations. 

Budapest, Hungary, was the city that exceeded tourists’ expectations the most, reversing the Paris syndrome effect, with 96.17% of the city’s reviews containing phrases of praise and pleasant surprise. Budapest’s top things to do primarily focus on exploring the city’s stunning architecture and meandering river. 

The Belgian capital, Brussels, was found to be the second most surprising city which exceeded tourists’ expectations, followed by Zurich. Despite the analysis reviewing cities from around the world, the top three is made up of land-locked European cities, perhaps an indication that tourists have lower expectations for cities away from the beach. 
Expectations of tourists arriving at Connolly Station are lower, then leaving: tourists are on average more satisfied with Dublin than they expect when they arrive.

Below are the top ten cities that exceeded tourists’ expectations, creating the true opposite of Paris syndrome: 

Rank	City	Country	Positive comments in reviews
1	Budapest	Hungary	96.17%
2	Brussels	Belgium	96.04%
3	Zurich	Switzerland	96.02%
4	Dublin	Ireland	95.90%
5	Lima	Peru	95.87%
6	Lisbon	Portugal	95.74%
7	Mexico City	Mexico	95.74%
8	Nice	France	95.63%
9	Auckland	New Zealand	95.45%
10	Sydney	Australia	95.44%

Words and phrases used to describe cities

In total we looked at 41 words and phrases (as well as inflections and misspellings) to establish the sentiment of tourists and how they felt about each city, and also how many times certain positive and negative phrases were used. 

Under expectation

With Orlando being the city that is most guilty of creating a Paris syndrome environment, it’s unsurprising to find that the data shows it is also the world’s hotspot for disappointed tourists. Orlando accounted for 1 in 20 (4.6%) of all reviews globally in our analysis mentioning how ‘disappointed’ or ‘disappointing’ tourists found the experience, the most out of any city analyzed. 

Orlando also had the highest number of mentions for how ‘terrible’ tourists felt their experience was (7.4%), with Berlin behind that (3.8%). Orlando also had the most mentions of how ‘rude’ (8.4%) people were just behind New York City (4.2%). 

The city most guilty of being ‘overrated’ was Da Nang, Vietnam holding 3.2% of reviews mentioning the word, followed closely by Paris itself (3%) living up to the syndrome’s name. 

However, when it came to reviews mentioning how ‘underwhelming’ tourists felt their trip was, Prague took the top spot having 3.9% of all reviews mentioning the word. Perhaps the Czech capital could be another contender for causing Paris syndrome. 

Over expectation

When looking into words and phrases associated with being positively surprised by a city, we found that Penang, Malaysia was where tourists were the most ‘pleasantly surprised’, with 2.3% of global mentions of the phrase being used to review Penang tourist attractions. 

Italy’s capital, Rome, took the top spot for having the most ‘must-see’ attractions (2.2%), as described by tourists, while Budapest’s attractions were described as ‘beautiful’ and ‘stunning’ the most out of all destinations analyzed. 

Los Angeles is home to the most ‘outstanding’ reviews (2.93%), surpassing other California cities such as San Francisco or San Diego, while visitors to Dubai say how ‘amazing’ the attractions there are the most.

Scams and rip-off destinations

Our analysis also allowed us to see which destinations were angering tourists the most when it came to scams, poor value for money, and being ripped off. 

Once again Orlando is top of the list, with the city holding onto 6.3% of the global reviews mentioning tourists being ripped off, followed by the Dominican Republic’s Punta Cana (3.9%). Singapore however had the highest percentage (8.2%) of reviews where tourists discussed how bad they felt the value of attractions on offer was. 

When it came to ‘scams’ however, Marrakesh, Morocco was the world’s capital for tourists feeling unhappy that they’ve been scammed. In fact, over one in ten (10.5%) of all reviews mentioning scams in our analysis came from Marrakesh, followed only by Paris (5.5%), perhaps another key reason the city has the namesake syndrome. 

Paris syndrome in the world’s most visited cities

Below is the full list of the world’s most visited cities that fit the criteria for this analysis and how they performed when it came to creating a Paris syndrome environment. The ratio reflects the number of positive comments (such as a pleasant surprise) for every singular negative comment (such as feelings of being underwhelmed). 

Rank	City	Ratio (Positive – Negative Comments)
1	Orlando	4.12
2	Jakarta	6.41
3	Pattaya	8.53
4	Denpasar	9.02
5	Guilin	9.31
6	Johannesburg	9.81
7	Da Nang	9.90
8	Ha Long	9.93
9	Shenzhen	10.05
10	Beijing	10.10
11	Osaka	10.17
12	Honolulu	10.30
13	Bangalore	10.43
14	Cebu City	10.45
15	Taipei	10.56
16	Marrakesh	10.61
17	Chennai	10.74
18	Berlin	10.85
19	Cairo	11.03
20	Cancún	11.13
21	London	11.21
22	Hurghada	11.35
23	Macau	11.36
24	Punta Cana	11.62
25	Muğla	11.70
26	New York City	11.79
27	Los Angeles	11.86
28	Jeju	11.87
29	Milan	12.26
30	Las Vegas	12.30
31	Paris	12.33
32	Riyadh	12.49
33	Ho Chi Minh City	12.52
34	Kuala Lumpur	12.56
35	Florence	12.57
36	Miami	12.59
37	Phuket	12.69
38	Dubai	12.71
39	Vienna	12.73
40	Rhodes	12.78
41	Sao Paulo	12.82
42	Amsterdam	12.94
43	Krabi	13.07
44	Guangzhou	13.19
45	Hong Kong	13.70
46	Penang	13.74
47	Rio de Janeiro	14.09
48	Abu Dhabi	14.11
49	Frankfurt	14.44
50	Agra	14.48
51	Madrid	14.51
52	Shanghai	14.62
53	Heraklion	15.00
54	Mumbai	15.02
55	Munich	15.20
56	Warsaw	15.29
57	Stockholm	15.48
58	Porto	15.52
59	Copenhagen	15.57
60	Hanoi	15.94
61	Toronto	15.98
62	Jaipur	16.12
63	Medina	16.16
64	Tel Aviv	16.26
65	Bangkok	16.61
66	Kyoto	16.73
67	Barcelona	16.87
68	Rome	17.06
69	Kraków	17.32
70	San Francisco	17.42
71	Seoul	17.51
72	Jerusalem	17.63
73	Kolkata	17.66
74	Prague	17.68
75	Singapore	17.70
76	Delhi	17.84
77	Buenos Aires	18.17
78	Venice	18.22
79	Fukuoka	18.31
80	Chiang Mai	18.90
81	Melbourne	19.21
82	Istanbul	20.00
83	Vancouver	20.27
84	Tokyo	20.69
85	Antalya	20.79
86	Sydney	20.92
87	Auckland	20.96
88	Nice	21.89
89	Mexico City	22.47
90	Lisbon	22.47
91	Lima	23.23
92	Dublin	23.40
93	Zurich	24.15
94	Brussels	24.26
95	Budapest	25.10

Methodology

We collected 826,292 popular online review platform’s reviews from the ten most-reviewed tourist attractions in 100 cities around the world based on international visitor numbers from EuroMonitor’s Top 100 City Destinations report and Mastercard’s ‘Global Cities Index’. 

Russian cities and Kyiv were removed due to the Ukraine crisis, and Mecca was discounted due to the fact that it is inaccessible to non-muslim travellers. Other cities were discounted if they had less than 1,000 instances of positive and negative comments from tourists. Data was collected on 10/11/22.

To analyze which cities are most overrated versus most underrated, we looked at the occurrence of a set list of keywords to determine the words that are most frequently used to describe a destination. We then worked out a ratio of how often words associated with “overrated” versus “underrated” were being used to rank the destinations. 

Sources

• Euromonitor, ‘Top 100 City Destinations: 2019 Edition’  https://go.euromonitor.com/white-paper-travel-2019-100-cities.html
• Mastercard, ‘Global Destination Cities Index’ (https://newsroom.mastercard.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/FINAL-Global-Destination-Cities-Index-Report.pdf)
• Libération, ‘Des Japonais Entre Mal Du Pays Et Mal De Paris’ (https://web.archive.org/web/20191219211711/https://next.liberation.fr/vous/2004/12/13/des-japonais-entre-mal-du-pays-et-mal-de-paris_502663)
• The Atlantic, ‘Paris Syndrome: A First-Class Problem for a First-Class Vacation’ (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/paris-syndrome-a-first-class-problem-for-a-first-class-vacation/246743/)

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